The Glacier Moves a Little Further Left

Interesting article in the Reno Gazette Journal yesterday. The salient points:

1. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told Reno casino heads he intends to support legalizing online poker in the U.S. (but not any other form of online gaming). Reid's support would be instrumental in pushing any bill legalizing online poker in the U.S. through the Senate.

2. The Reno casinos have expressed concern that online poker will lead to full-blown online gaming, both of which will hurt the bottom lines of small Nevada casinos.

So you have Harry Reid, a Democrat only the state of Nevada could produce, now softening what had previously been a hard-line stance against online poker. This is not a surprise. Reid is barely beating Republican Senate challenger Sharron Angle in the polls ten weeks out from the election -- and mind you, Angle is a Tea Party candidate from whom even Fox News has distanced itself. Reid should be winning this election easily. Angle was by far the worst of the three Republican candidates who could have come out of the Republican primary and yet still Reid is struggling against her. It was only a matter of time before the vast coffers of campaign contributions available from Harrah's, online poker sites and others with similar interests persuaded Reid of the error of his ways.

You have the Nevada casinos who, perhaps not surprisingly, do not present a united front on the internet poker issue. The large casino holdings -- the Stations, the Harrahs, the MGMs and the Wynns of the world -- are more or less in favor of regulated online poker in the United States. Harrah's in particular hopes to leverage its WSOP brand into an online poker site. Whether the other large casino chains would follow suit is less clear, but they at least seem to recognize that one way or another online gaming is coming and they need to find ways to synthesize it into their current business. Adapt or die.

On the other side of the ledger are the smaller upstate Casinos -- places like the Peppermill in Reno. It seems like they expect to get out-muscled on the online front by the deep pockets of their larger cousins. Rather than look for niches they can take advantage of with respect to legalized online poker, they're taking a "the sky is falling" approach to the whole thing. In a state with unemployment at 14%, the Reno casinos (and Angle) have decided to try the scare tactic of "supporting any bill that legalizes online poker will take jobs away from Nevadans".

A few weeks ago I said "Wake me when we get there," regarding the return of legalized online poker in the United States. Certainly Reid changing his stance is helpful, but there are still lots of moving pieces that have to fall into place. As long as operators whose interests *should* align with legalized U.S. online poker dig in their heels and set their backs against it (Commerce Casino, I'm looking at you), legalized online poker in the U.S. will remain a fair distance off.

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Always Be Closing

Yesterday I played the Detox Poker Main Event, after having satellited in the night before. The day was an object lesson in having a terrible, terrible seat. It's not that any player at my table was so amazingly good; rather, the table dynamics were such that I had the worst seat. To compound the problem, my table never broke the whole day.

I'm not a good tournament player. I know this. And a better player than me probably would have taken a few more chances, even despite some shitty table dynamics, and found a few more spots to shove. Certainly, moving in six times in the last hour, and only being called once, suggested I could.

In the end, it's all on me. I can bitch about a bad run of cards, I can bitch about 2-, 3- and 4-outers, I can bitch about a bad seat. But it's all just excuses. Re-watching The Scene from Glengarry Glen Ross (aka "the 7 minutes that justify Alec Baldwin's entire career"), I found it to be a damn good analogy for playing tournament poker. "Your name is you're wanting. You can't play in the man's game? You can't close them? Then go home and tell your wife your troubles."

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1,001 F-Trainian Nights

Hmm, my 1,000th post was the Detox pimp post.

Hmm, it took me six years to peck out 1,000 posts.

Yes, it's quiet 'round these parts. There are things I'd like to say but can't, and things I'm not sure I want to say but might some day anyway. Today, however, is not that day.

For the poker industry, summer ends in mid-July. But it's hard to believe that almost 5 weeks have passed since that time, and now the summer is drawing close to its more traditional ending point of Labor Day. Where do the days go?

WCOOP is coming up next month, the poker equivalent of the transition to fall. WCOOP will mean more opportunities for writing and more opportunities for shaking my head as ill-equipped people continue to bash their heads against the tournament poker wall. There are some travels on the horizon, as always.

It's probably going to be time to shake things up soon. They've gotten a bit to static -- not enough forward motion. That stasis may be comfortable for some people but it's not my way.

Until then, however, expect things to continue apace, which probably means less frequent posting.

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Detox Poker Series Starts This Week at Hard Rock

It's Monday Pimp Day at RTFT. Today we're pimping the Detox Poker Series that starts Friday August 13 at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas and runs until Sunday August 22.

I'm no fan of the Hard Rock, as I believe I mentioned last week. When I first checked out the "Poker Lounge" in 2008, I didn't have the best feeling about its potential for success. It turned out that during the following two years the room was mismanaged at just about every step of the way. Being well-hidden from the main gaming floor did not help the room's cause.

But!

Recently the poker room staff seemed to be pushing to increase the room's visibility. Matt Savage took a risk and attached his good name and considerable talents to the poker room by teaming up with them for the Detox Series. (Never mind that after announcing the Detox Series, the Hard Rock decided to relocate and downsize its poker room from 18 tables to 6-8 tables once Detox is over.)

Matt is not planning to let the Hard Rock's past failures stand in the way of a great series. Consider what he has put together for Detox:

* 14 separate events with buy-ins ranging from $230 to $550;
* A nice mix of NLHE (9 events in varying flavors) and "other games" (5 events);
* A $5,000-added player appreciation event at the end of the series;
* 3 guaranteed prize pools (Event 1, $350 NLHE - $100,000; Event 10, $230 NLHE with 1 $200 rebuy - $50,000; Event 14, $550 NLHE Main Event - $200,000); and
* Something Matt likes to call "deep structures not deep stacks". At this time last year I wrote a short post about how Matt is one of the few active TDs who understands this crucial difference.

Matt is keen to create a great tournament series AND a great playing experience for everyone. To that end, he's organized a 2+2 and Media Party on Thursday August 12, and has arranged for certain food options (In&Out, pizza, drink specials, and discounts on other food options at Hard Rock) for players during the series. He's even had the forethought to put together a cell-phone charging station. Trust me -- as someone who was asked by players almost every day at the WSOP if I had a blackberry/iPhone/whatever charger, this is a simple but brilliant idea.

I have absolutely no qualms about throwing my support behind the Detox Poker Series. I've known Matt almost since the day I got into the poker industry (we met at APT Macau in 2008) and know that his name and his previous endeavors speak for themselves. This will be a great tournament series with buy-ins at a level that most people can afford.

See you there!

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What Do You Look Like?

I played a short live cash game session on Friday night, my first (other than two Pokerati game sessions during the WSOP) since mid-May. A player sat down on my right soon after I arrived and bought in for $100. He took the big blind immediately and so had the button for his third hand at the table. That hand I wound up doubling him up on a flip. After the hand he looked at me and said, "Oh, I know who you are. You don't know me but I know you."

Uh oh.

I like to keep a low profile at the poker table. I don't usually tell people that I work in the poker industry. Although people find my work interesting, they tend to mark me as a player against whom they should take extra care if I mention I work in poker. It doesn't matter whether or not I'm actually as good as they think; the mere fact that their guard is up lowers my edge a bit. Thus my standard story, if asked, is that I'm a New York lawyer. It's kind of true.

Everyone once in a while, however, someone recognizes me. In this case, the person was phluxer of Wired Pairs, in town with Veneno. While I was happy to meet a fellow blogger and (briefly, because I wound up heading to Binion's after an hour for some BARGE activities) reconnect with some people I had lost touch with, I was unhappy that the young kid from Vancouver on my left seemed very interested in our exchange. Ten minutes later that kid asked if I played a lot.

"Actually, this is my first cash game session in three months," I said. Again, kind of true if you ignore the Pokerati sessions -- which have a home game feel -- and all the Rush Poker I've been playing since coming back from New Zealand.

"You look like someone who plays every day," my Vancouver friend responded. That's *definitely* not the image I want. I told him I wasn't sure if what he said was a compliment or an insult but assured him that I hadn't been in the Venetian since April. It was all about trying to put him, and the rest of the table, at ease.

I don't mind that phluxer recognized me, especially since I wouldn't have recognized him. It was a nice little piece of happenstance. And I wound up getting $70 back of the $100 I lost before heading to Binion's. But table image is one of those things that I think more and more about with every cash game session. The cards might not be in my control, but my table image is.

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The Four Types of Poker Twitterers

Poker's a solitary game. But with the advent of social networking tools like Twitter, poker players can now invite other people into their solitary world -- or at least feel like other people are listening and taking part in their solitary pursuit. There are four broad types of poker twitterers:

1) The Black Cat - this person uses Twitter almost exclusively for bad-beat stories and to lament about sessions where the person is running bad. The Black Cat wants everyone to know just how unlucky he/she is. If only luck weren't involved, the Black Cat would win every time. When the Black Cat is winning, there's nothing to gripe about and nothing gets posted.

2) The Epic Hero - The counterbalance to the Black Cat. The Epic Hero wants you to believe they're the best. player. EVER! by only posting to Twitter when they've made a brilliant play or are winning in their game. If they hit a big score, Twitter smells of their farts for a week. If they're playing badly or losing a ton? Not a peep. That would dispel the notion that they're an A-player.

3) The Court Reporter - The Court Reporter tweets every significant hand they play, good or bad. While the Court Reporter presents a more fair image of his/her play than either the Black Cat or the Epic Hero, he/she doesn't discriminate between a $5 MTT on PokerStars and a $10-20 NL game in LA. Every hand of poker gets twittered, no matter the stakes. The Court Reporter's twitter account is just a long string of boring-ass hand histories.

4) The Barry Greenstein - Probably the least offensive of the poker twitterers. This person updates their tournament chip count at every break, starting with Break 1 of Day 1. There's usually not much context for the number, making it even more meaningless than a mid-Day 1 chip count already is.

Here's the thing about all of the poker Twitterers outlined above: unless you're at a final table of a major buy-in poker tournament, none of your followers really care. Great, you're up two buy-ins. Wonderful, you got out-drawn on the river again. Perfect, I have a completely context-less chip update for you during the middle of Day 1 of a three-day tournament. Why do you, Twitterer of these banalities, think that anyone cares about any of them?

Maybe it's true that most of what goes on Twitter is drek that tries to make people feel more significant than they are, but poker players -- with their propensity towards insecurity and egotism -- are among the most flagrant offenders. They care too much about what other people think of them, and many of them have a huge need to prove to everyone else how good they are. That's the root of most of the poker-related tweets that get posted.

I made a resolution during the second half of the WSOP, after seeing too many poker-update tweets, to never tweet another hand of poker. If I'm playing properly, I should be focused on what's going on at my table instead of burying my head in my phone. Besides that, tweeting a hand is just gnashing my teeth or beating my chest about the results of the hand. Shouldn't I be focusing on making proper decisions and letting the results sort themselves out?

Do I think that people are going to stop posting poker hands to Twitter? Of course not. Do I wish they would? You bet.

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Poker's Long Road Back

You might be wondering why, as an interested member of the poker industry and a lawyer, I haven't yet had anything to say about HR 2267, the Barney Frank-sponsored bill that would license and regulate Internet gambling. Last week the bill escaped the House Financial Services Committee in a 41-22 vote that was largely along partisan lines.

To put it simply: wake me up when we get there.

Four years after the back-handed passage of the UIGEA, the fact that this bill made it out of committee is an encouraging first step. But it's just that -- a first step, and a baby step at that. It's a long road from the passage of a bill in committee to fully licensed, regulated and operating internet poker in the United States. Only after a bill becomes a law -- a lengthy process in and of itself -- will anyone bother to set up the regulatory framework and licensing scheme necessary to comply with the law. There won't be any online poker in the U.S. until that framework is in place.

Consider this: HR 2267 was introduced by Barney Frank to the full House on May 6, 2009. A marked-up version made it out of committee on July 29, 2010, more than a year later. Although the Senate typically acts faster than the House, there is no companion bill going forward in the Senate right now, which means that should HR 2267 be passed by the full House it's going to be seen with fresh eyes in the Senate. And how long might passage by the full House take, anyway? Nothing gets done in Washington in August. Mid-term elections are in early October. Then what? What happens in a new session of Congress?

Obviously the sooner we get started on the whole process, the sooner (fully regulated) online poker will return to the United States. I'm certainly glad someone's working on it. But don't kid yourself. The process will take years.

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Detox Looms

It used to be that the time directly after the WSOP was a "quiet period" for a span of 4-6 weeks. But with the proliferation of poker around the globe -- especially in the guise of PokerStars' global tours -- that's no longer the case. The alphabet soup of poker tours ensures that there's always an event in some part of the world just around the corner. Right after the WSOP Main Event it was the ANZPT Queenstown event; this week it's the LAPT Brazil event. Next week is the Detox Poker Series here in Las Vegas.

The Detox series is the brain-child of Matt Savage, in collaboration with the Hard Rock Poker Lounge. It's an odd pairing if only because the Hard Rock has plans to cut their poker room from its present size of 18 tables down to a more modest 6-8 tables after the tournament series is over. For what it's worth, that makes total sense. I've never seen more than five tables in action at the Hard Rock outside of special events like the Victory Poker charity tournament.

I remember going down to the Hard Rock Lounge shortly after it first opened. I didn't like it -- the front tables, for me, are incredibly problematic, with their low ceiling and proximity to the front bar and smoking area. The room as a whole was always poorly signed and located, such that half of the hotel guests probably never even knew it was there. And although the staff promised they were going to spread every game under the sun, they did nothing to actually try to build the player base for those games. Instead you got "just another" Vegas poker room, albeit with nice chairs.

Now it seems like the Hard Rock is taking some active steps in the right direction with a player-friendly tournament series... but shortly after setting up the series decided to downsize the room. Mismanagement?

I haven't decided if I'm going to play any of the Detox tournaments. Although there's a wide range of games on offer that I enjoy, just enjoying the games offered isn't enough. That's what my Golden Nugget PLO8 experience taught me this summer. The oddball games will draw all of the best Vegas grinders -- people who play tournament versions of those games online multiple times a week. I'm not arrogant enough to think that just because I enjoy a certain game that I have any edge over that type of field.

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